Exhibitions International – förlag

Since 1893, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium own Jacques Louis David's masterpiece The Death of Marat (1793). In order to bear witness to the central position of this painting in the advent of modern art, the Royal Museums dedicate an exhibition to this masterpiece. For the first time, this publication offers an unprecedented approach to David's artwork by combining both historical and contemporary views, as well as a scientific approach by presenting the results of a research campaign that involved laboratory analyses.

The exhibition is structured in three sections giving the public a new understanding of David's work. The first scientific section presents the results of the material and technical pluridisciplinary study entitled "Face to Face" conducted on The Death of Marat, which reveals for the first time the underlying sketch of the masterpiece. This research, carried out by the European Centre for Archaeometry of the University of Liège, is based on the use of scientific imaging techniques and non‐invasive physico‐chemical analyses carried out in situ. In the second, historical section, studio replicas conserved in Reims, Dijon and Versailles are presented, as well as a version belonging to a private collection (Paris). Finally, this section is completed by contemporary interpretations by artists such as Picasso, Ai Weiwei, Gavin Turk, Jean‐Luc Moerman, Jan Van Imschoot, or a work by Rachel Labastie, who shifts the focus from Marat to Charlotte Corday, the absent protagonist in David's representation.

Provenance research for non-Western heritage in Europe is now a must in the field of museum studies and cultural policy studies, yet no scholarly work has scrutinised the collections of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (Belgium) as a whole.

While the institution's history and some of its scientific sections or collections have already been investigated, at times in great depth, this book provides new frameworks for interpretation in the light of current debates. Structured around two lines - the heritage field in historical and contemporary Belgo-Congolese contexts, and the more specific case of the Tervuren museum's collections (which, moreover, are neither solely cultural nor Central African) -, this collection of texts gives a broad overview in the form of recent and previously unpublished research, updated summaries of prior investigations, interviews, and artistic contributions.

The book also explores new trends in provenance research for colonial collections and evaluates both the possibilities and the limitations of such research, its implications for our understanding of colonial history as a whole, and the challenges facing museums today.

Text in English and French.